The Atlantic says there are lessons in designing walkable, mixed-use districts that can be gleamed from successes and failures of pedestrian malls. The reports says the world's first planned pedestrian mall was built in 1953 in Rotterdam. Six years later, Kalamazoo, Michigan, became the first American city to adopt the concept. Austrian-born architect Victor Gruen (most famous for his American shopping malls) envisioned a project for the Michigan town that would resemble Vienna's Ringstrasse. Instead, a much scaled-down concept was built in 1959. The mall would be successful into the 1990s when residents decided it had to go.
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Source: The Atlantic
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